Netflix’s first interactive episode arrives on the service today, giving viewers a chance to shape the narrative through a series of decisions they make throughout the experience. The new episode of Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale gives users more than a dozen decision points throughout its length, giving young viewers reason to rewatch it several times to explore the branching paths. A second interactive episode, for the children’s show Buddy Thunderstruck, arrives next month. For now, Netflix is calling its interactive episodes an experiment. But if its 99 million subscribers like them, the format could come to the service’s more popular shows — and help bring a new form of interactive storytelling into the mainstream. First, though, Netflix has to see whether the mainstream has an appetite for it. To begin, the company decided to focus on making interactive shows for children. “Kids are already talking to the screen,” says Carla Engelbrecht Fisher, Netflix’s director of pro...
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